Unintended consequences

One of the happier results of Our Dear Departure from politics today, still pink and warm, is that the O'Brien Protocol, formulated for the other possibility, now won't have to be implemented.

From the "debates" of the House of Assembly on December 14th last year:

So you have to get to each one of the doors. You have to do that, and you have to talk to people when you are out. I do it myself in regard to when I am out to the grocery stores and whatnot, and I try to remind them, because God forbid, if we lose the leadership that we have right now, that is certainly the envy of all of Canada, as I have travelled within the country itself, I have heard time and time again: God, we wish we had a Premier like yours. So God forbid that we would lose him as a leader at this particular time. I will say this, that some point in time, I suppose a lot of people expect that we will lose him, but my idea of it all is that we should mummify him and keep him in the seat and do not let anybody know in Newfoundland and Labrador that he is dead. I think under just having him here, we will do much better than if we had somebody else in that chair. So I will say that there as well. I have said that, actually, publicly at times. I say it with some type of jest, because I am not sure if he would want to be mummified and put in that chair, but in the meantime, I would like to have him there myself, because I have all the admiration in the world.